When you have a chronic condition, you spend a lot of your life being doubted by others. Not all diseases can be seen. In fact, a lot of them aren’t. That’s why invisible diseases can be so deadly, because nobody knows they’re there until it’s too late.
Not only do you have to suffer silently from pain and other symptoms, but you have to watch what your misery does to everyone around you. Loved ones. Friends. You name it.
Underneath the Sycamore Tree started as a short story called Mama’s Eyes that I wrote for my Creative Writing class in undergrad. It was a story I wrote from the heart about how the relationship between a mother and daughter changes when the daughter becomes chronically ill. It’s a story I reflected on for many weeks before submitting it, and maybe years before choosing to take everyone’s advice and expanding it into a full-length novel.
This book was both one of the easiest and hardest ones to write. Odd, right? I wrote this faster than I wrote any book before. When a story comes from the heart, it’s going to gut you and cleanse you all at once. It’s therapeutic but also painful in ways that is hard to explain. You’re reliving moments you wish to forget.
Like the first chunk of hair found on a pillow, the first of many prescriptions, missed classes, seeing your family look at you like you’re slipping away, and the fear—the fear of not knowing what’s going to happen because doctors don’t seem to believe you even though you struggle getting out of bed, and you’re skin and bones, and your hair is falling out. After a while, you begin believing them when they say you’re crazy.
This book is the representation of something very rarely found in literature. Often, we’re scared of reading stories that remind us of real life. I get it. We all want to escape reality, right? Reality always finds us though when we finish the last page.
I wanted to write a story that was so raw it stripped the soul. Every now and again, I think we need a reality check. Fiction can speak millions of truths that we’re not always willing to hear in the real world.
So this is mine.
This is my pain.
This is my fear.
This is my worst nightmare.
Please keep in mind that this is fiction. Getting a lupus （or any illness） diagnosis does not mean you’re fated to die. It means you’re fated to fight, and that’s something you need to accept from the start in order to make the most out of the life you’re given. It’s not easy, but I promise you’ll get through it a day at a time.
No other book I write will be like this, and I promise you’ll get a more traditional happily ever after from here on out. Even if you might not love me right now, know that I love all of you.
Keep fighting my loves,
Barbara
Where The Little Birds Go Sneak Peek
PROLOGUE
Kinley / Present
I never expected him to come crashing back into my life. Without warning, without a single clue, I was face to face with my greatest weakness. Nobody knew that I was already familiar with the silver-eyed charmer whose face encompassed every magazine, newsstand, and Hollywood tabloid cover.
Before Corbin Callum became America’s biggest star, he was just the new kid in the middle of nowhere New York. I knew all his secrets from the start—where he got the scar on his right eyebrow, why he has two black tally marks tattooed on his left pec, and who he lost his virginity to. It isn’t information I gathered from the press or pieced together from rumors.
Long before we dove headfirst into the industries we’ve dreamed of being big figures in, we made a pact that we’d never leave each other behind. But our aspirations were larger than the old versions of ourselves that thought everything would remain the same. We couldn’t keep up the charade, pretending to be the teenagers who had the world at their feet.
Once upon a time, I was his.
Before the fame.
Before the girls.
Before her.
I accepted that we’d never see each other again, but here we are.
He meets my eyes and grins.
“Hey, Little Bird.”
CHAPTER ONE
Corbin / Present
I’ve officially lost it at twenty-eight.
Regardless of the half-naked woman sporting nothing but a white t-shirt and black panties in front of me, I’m staring through distorted glass at one fully clothed. The way her chestnut hair flows down her back as she laughs at something the graying man in front of her says has me harder than the scrap of lace over a tan pert ass five feet away. I know the husky laugh well. I’ve even been the cause of it a time or two.
But that was before.
Suddenly, I’m not picturing the blonde in my clothes. I’m picturing a familiar brunette with a curvy body under a thin sheet of my favorite worn cotton. A small birthmark in the shape of a heart would peek out from the fabric on her inner thigh where I’d be able to trace it with my finger.
The brunette isn’t in front of me though. She’s too busy talking to world renown Tyler Buchannan as he flirts his way into her good graces in hopes that’ll lead to a few glasses of wine and a strip show in the penthouse he rented.
Unbeknownst to him, she doesn’t drink. At least, she didn’t. I guess that could have changed over the past ten years. I’d be a fucking fool to think nothing else has.
The front of my slacks gets too tight for comfort as my head conjures old memories of bare skin under my old AC/DC sweatshirt. That birthmark likes to make its appearance in the back of my mind more times than not, and I can still feel the sensation of smooth skin under my fingertip like it was yesterday.
“My, my,” a sultry voice purrs.
Slowly, my eyes meet a pair of blue ones staring down at the hard dick tenting my pants. Adjusting myself with no shame, I settle into the chair I’ve been in for the past ten minutes.
“Is that for me?” Olivia asks, shooting me the same wicked grin she gave me the first day we ever worked together. I like Olivia Davies. She’s always easy to work with, and certainly not bad on the eyes. She referred to herself as Hitler’s wet dream once, which didn’t go over very well with the press we were doing interviews with. I cracked up, but both our managers scolded us for the shitshow we created.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Stretching my legs out and crossing my arms over my chest, I nod toward the free chair beside me. “I wasn’t thinking about you.”
I’m sure she rolls her eyes as she takes a seat, sitting sideways on the chair and using the back as an armrest. “I’m sure. You were thinking about Lena, right? Honestly, I would be too. I can admit when I have a girl crush. She gives me a lady boner.”
I find my gaze locked on chestnut hair again, her facial features cracked from the thick decorated glass separating us. “Uh…what?”
“Lena,” Liv repeats, snorting out an amused laugh. “Your wife?”
I roll my shoulders back and force myself to look around the kitchen. Anything but the woman outside it. Everything here looks shiny, expensive, and new. The counters are dark wood, the countertops white granite, and the appliances all featuring the best of the best with brands I’m sure are helping fund the project through sponsorships.
“Yeah.”
Except that’s a lie. The only woman who should get me this hard with a single memory should be my wife. Unfortunately for me, that isn’t the five-seven figure walking alongside Buchannan as he gives her a tour.